


Down the Darkest Night With You

by enevera



Category: Daybreak (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Canonical Character Death, Cussing, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Guilt, I Tried, POV Third Person Limited, Post-Canon Fix-It, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-18 00:01:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21518602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enevera/pseuds/enevera
Summary: Josh doesn’t know why he lies when they ask where Eli is. Honestly, he doesn’t. He doesn’t.
Relationships: Eli Cardashyan & Josh Wheeler
Comments: 14
Kudos: 64





	Down the Darkest Night With You

**Author's Note:**

> lowkey inspired by this https://archiveofourown.org/works/21299195
> 
> Title from Strange Love by Simple Creatures, the full two lines being "She bit her lip and kissed me hard /  
> Please drag me down the darkest night with you"
> 
> Tell me if you spot any mistakes and also yeah i invented a name for Sam's group cause i feel like she'd change it after she came into power. Enjoy!

Josh feels kinda like he stepped on a rusty nail and, just when he thought it would heal up fine, got tetanus. His ex had just reaffirmed how bad of a boyfriend he was, which, okay, fair, but then also just took over the Jocks. And that’s not even touching on all the shit that just went down with Burr and the missile and...god fuck he doesn’t wanna think about Eli. No flashbacks, no screen cuts, no fucking audience telling him he should probably work this out. No  _ fucking _ way. No! He’s already had enough to deal with, he doesn’t need that. 

Naturally, this is when Sam announces that the school is her’s now and that she’s open to taking anyone who wants to join, which is most of the Jocks and a few of the Daybreakers. Fuck his life. Angelica is going to have Words about that and he’s going to have to listen. Fuck.  _ Fuck.  _ He doesn’t have the fucking mental capacity for this.

Sam doesn’t even look at him as they leave, all piled on the Turbo’s former float thing. Maybe it’s a fair trade that Sam’s people get the vehicle but they get the actual guy? Fuck, he’s going to have to deal with that, too, isn’t he? Fuck.  _ Fuck. _

__ The worst part, though, he thinks, is that even though he’s... beyond sad (so beyond sad, but to get into it is to cry and he can’t do that right now) that Sam is gone, that he still thinks that he loves her, he’s already mourned her and being alive and Not With Him is better than being Dead. He hopes. God, he fucking hopes.

“We should get going,” Wesley says, clapping a hand on his shoulder, pushing him toward the mall. He nods, vague and unblinking and takes a minute to remember that somehow he’s become an authority figure. Fuck.  _ Fuck. _

“Yeah, yeah let’s go.”

They go.

+

It’s a week before anyone asks. He’s given a week; a week of crying himself to sleep, hoping no one else can hear; a week of thinking, of drowning in the thought that it was pointless, that Eli’s death had been for nothing, because Sam didn’t really need saving and she was gone now anyway. Fuck.  _ Fuck.  _ He couldn’t deal and he hoped no one else could see because even though he’s made peace with his father, now he’s seeing Eli out of the corner of his eye instead.

He went back to where Eli had died; slipped out a few days in, one where there was enough stability that he could say he was going to scavenge, and recent enough that people would assume he was still accepting Sam’s loss (which he was, but that’s not the point). He still had to fight off the worried gazes shot at his back. 

He found blood; lots of blood and no Eli and he only stayed a few minutes because maybe ghoulies can catch the scent of puke, too.

Fuck.  _ Fuck… _

But, yeah, a week. Only a fucking week before Angelica comes out of the woodwork to ask. Only a week and, fuck, he’s not prepared. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be fucking prepared because how do you do that? How do you tell someone that another person, someone you all knew, is dead? How?

So he doesn’t.

“He, uh, left. I bribed him with lotion for the Baron Triumph costume, and then he left.”

“Oh,” says Angelica, a frown on her face, before she spins and rolls back over to whatever store she crawled out of.

For a minute he hates her. He hates her for asking, for not wanting more of an explanation, for not being more _ fucking concerned-. _ But she’s a kid and Eli is dead and Sam is gone and Angelica doesn’t know. She doesn’t know. No one knows.

No one knows because if Josh doesn’t say it, if he doesn’t tell, then did Eli ever really die at all?

+

Six months go by and it’s fine. They hold their ground, keep their land and resources, work with Sam’s Squad a little, and the Cheermazons, too. Eli’s mall becomes a home, of sorts. Their home. It’s nice, he supposes. 

Mavis’s mural is gone. Josh isn’t sure what it means that he hallucinated her. To be honest, it scares him, just a tiny bit, but he locks it away in the box of Things He Can’t Deal With in his head, along with Eli and his mother. He makes a smaller version of the mural on a wall at the convergence of the territories; does it over a couple of weeks of days off because the others insist he needs a break. He says he doesn’t, but he’s sort of glad they know he’s lying.

He’s heard people compliment it before, his mural, but he never fesses up to it. Mavis’s was better anyway.

He doesn’t go back to where Eli died; can’t bring himself to. He knows why. He still won’t go back.

As for his lovelife, it’s pretty nonexistent. KJ was mostly just there for the physical stuff and Sam...exists. He only really talks with her in a friendly or business capacity now. Politics with platonic benefits. Kinda. He thinks the apocalypse is a lot more chill when there’s no drama like that. At least that he’s involved with; he can’t speak for anyone else.

Speaking of, no, he’s not going to talk about Turbo because that’s a long, not at all relevant story. If you want to hear it, ask someone else. Josh doesn’t want to talk about it.

But, yeah, he’s fine. They’re all fine. Everything is fine.

+

Everything is not fine. At all, whatsoever, not in a  _ million years _ . Fuck.  _ Fuck _ . So much for this being a normal supply run. He should’ve realized this was going to go south when the first store they hit only had canned beets.

And, of course, now he’s fucking running for his life, KJ on his heels, being chased by at  _ least _ seven ghoulies and yeah there’s only so much he can take in one day, okay? Fuck this shit, Josh wants a nap.

“Focaccia!” says a ghoulie shrilly from behind him. Josh would cover his ears if he weren’t at a dead sprint. 

“Stalker!” says another one, the dried blood on its jaw cracking and flaking away.

“Faster,” says KJ, pushing ahead of him to make it to the next corner. 

“Fuck,” says Josh when they turn, because not only are they being chased, now their backs are, quite literally, against a wall.

“Dumbasses,” says a voice, grabbing both of them by the backs of their shirts and pulling them through the back alley door he’d opened behind them.

“The fuck?” says KJ, knocking the stranger’s hands away as she and Josh turn to face their rude savior.

“Only if you beg,” says the not-so-strange stranger, shooting KJ finger guns.

Josh, of course, says nothing.

Eli Cardashyan is fucking alive.

Fuck.  _ Fuck. _

**Author's Note:**

> So, tell me what y'all think, yeah? Also, i might make this eli/josh. idk. thoughts?


End file.
